'It took a damn long time.'
It took a damn long time just to awaken the Guiyeong Spear’s final ritual, but opening a door to the Shadow Realm where the Shadow Lord would be required even more effort.
After staring at Guiyeong’s info window for a while, Su-ho closed it.
Then he opened the special quest window.
[ Special Quest ]
# A special quest manifested for Player An Su-ho.
# This is a linked quest, and if you fail during execution, it will automatically end.
# Quest rewards are paid by accumulating results, and if you fail midway, rewards will not be paid.
# You have completed the first quest.
# The second special quest originates from the Shadow Lord.
“What?”
Su-ho’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the special quest window.
More than anything else, he’d been really curious what the second quest would be, but what the hell was this—apparently, the second quest originated from the Shadow Lord.
'What the... so it really is like that.'
It was too perfect to be a coincidence.
Then all of this was one of two things.
Either the system was tuning things while watching him, or his growth sequence had been decided.
Either way, it pissed him off.
But even if it pissed him off, there was nothing he could do right now.
All he could do was hurry up and grow stronger and wait until he could access all of the system’s security.
'Thanks to that, my next job is decided right away.'
Closing the special quest window, Su-ho decided to head outside for now.
Outside would be chaos by now.
If he went by how he felt, he wanted to leave for the Shadow Realm immediately, but first, he had to calm the anxiety of people all over the world.
Su-ho took the exit portal out.
*
“This is driving me insane.”
“Ha... what do we do?”
“What do you mean, what do we do—we just have to trust and wait.”
“What if something happens to the Sword Saint?”
“Hey! Don’t say such blasphemous things! Believe, Swordmen.”
“Swordmen.”
Outside the gate.
The world had fallen into chaos.
It couldn’t not.
Because a Big Gate had appeared out of nowhere without a single warning, and people were gripped by fear.
With the previous Big Gates, there’d at least been a preparation period—this time, there hadn’t even been that.
Thankfully, Su-ho had been deployed immediately and had gone in alone, but even so, the anxiety was the same.
They knew he was the world’s hero, but he wasn’t immortal.
So there was only one thing they could do.
Pray.
And unlike the previous Big Gate, for safety reasons, even broadcast station cameras couldn’t get close.
And then—
Bzzzt!
A gate line formed.
One of the phenomena that happened when a gate was cleared.
Soon, a portal opened there, and someone came out.
It was Su-ho.
“Heeheeheehing!”
Su-ho emerged from the exit portal riding Cheolma.
Because it was a gate summoned over the Mariana Trench, there wasn’t a single place to put his feet down.
Shwaaaa!
The sound of waves rolling.
Su-ho looked at the cleared gate portal and smiled.
'It’s over.'
You only really feel like you’ve properly cleared a gate once you come back out the way you went in.
'So does that mean this is a safe zone now?'
Just like a shell doesn’t land on the same spot twice, a gate, too, doesn’t get summoned again in a place it was already summoned once.
So the Mariana Trench, where a Big Gate had been summoned in his previous life, wouldn’t have another gate summoned again.
The contents of the gate had been different, but in any case, the one Su-ho had summoned here had still been a Big Gate.
Sitting atop Cheolma, Su-ho took out his phone.
It was the public-facing phone he used for work.
When he turned it on, the piled-up contacts were no joke.
It was all a mess of worry and questions about the Big Gate.
Su-ho turned that phone off and turned on his sub phone.
The sub phone only had a few missed contacts.
He called Kim Geon first.
- Section Chief!
“Yeah. It’s me.”
- Are you alright? What happened?
“I handled it. The gate’s been cleared, and I just came out. I’ll contact the U.N. side.”
- Yes, understood. Ah—and really, thank goodness. You really went through a lot.
“Thanks. You work hard too.”
- Yes!
As soon as the call ended, he called Charlie.
- President! Are you alright?! How are you even calling right now?!
“Hey, my ears. Ask one at a time. I just came out of the gate, and the Big Gate’s been dealt with. I called you the moment I got out, Director.”
- Oh my god... you really went through a lot. May I announce this immediately?
“Of course. That’s why I called. I’ve got a backlog of calls, so I’m hanging up for now.”
- Of course! You did something huge! Great work!
After that, he also called Jo Jin-hwi and Jeong Cheol-min to tell them the gate had been cleared.
- As expected of you, President. You really went through a lot! I’ll run the article right away.
- Man, Su-ho. I was so worried I thought I was going to die. I’m so glad you’re safe. You really did something huge!
Most reactions were similar.
Honestly, what else could you say to someone who’d just cleared a Big Gate and walked out?
After contacting everyone he could think of immediately, Su-ho finally caught his breath and started preparing to move to Korea.
“Let’s go, Cheolma. It’s been a while—let’s step on home soil.”
“Heeheeheehing!”
Cheolma started running toward Korea.
*
After arriving in Korea, Su-ho met Jo Jin-hwi right away and shot a few quick interview clips.
It was a Big Gate the entire world knew about, so he couldn’t refuse to disclose information just because it was annoying.
Of course, he didn’t tell them everything.
For example, that this Big Gate had occurred because of his special quest.
Instead, he spoke in broad terms about what he’d gone through inside the second Big Gate.
And because he’d cleared this Big Gate alone as well, he drove the point home again that he would be the one to enter any Big Gates that happened in the future, alone.
Once the video was released, people’s reactions were intense.
No—originally it had already been religious-level, but now there were people who truly regarded Su-ho like a god.
A natural phenomenon.
Because the environment inside the Big Gate that Su-ho revealed this time was thought to be something no one could ever clear unless they were a god.
'I really can’t die.'
That was what Su-ho thought after seeing people’s reactions online.
And when he’d finished dealing with most of the cleanup, Su-ho finally had room to worry about something else.
Entering the Shadow Realm.
'I’ve handled everything I needed to handle. There’s no reason to put it off anymore.'
Of course, the Hero’s Fate quest he’d received first was important too.
But the long-awaited door to the Shadow Realm had finally opened—how could he not go in?
And it was a special quest, too.
Su-ho entered the Subspace House and summoned Guiyeong.
“Guiyeong.”
“Kkung!”
“Let’s go to the Shadow Realm. Open the door.”
“Kkungkkung!”
This guy.
The guy whose default °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° was silence—after being strengthened to the maximum, it had started opening its mouth a lot more.
Fine by me.
Better than being nothing but quiet.
It was right after he ordered Guiyeong to open the door to the Shadow Realm.
[ Guiyeong summons the gate of the Shadow Realm. ]
A system notice.
At the same time, Guiyeong hopped up, then created a massive black portal the size of a grand gate, in a form that burned and blazed.
Thankfully, the gate of the Shadow Realm could be summoned even inside the Subspace House.
Su-ho nodded as he looked at the gate.
“So it’s not that Guiyeong summons the gate—Guiyeong itself becomes the gate.”
That’s why the option was attached to Guiyeong, not the Guiyeong Spear.
Su-ho stepped into the gate.
[ Entering the Shadow Realm. ]
The moment he entered the Shadow Realm, a bizarre sensation he’d never felt in his life wrapped around his body, and his vision went dark.
[ Qualifications have been proven. ]
Then, along with the words that his qualifications had been proven, his darkened vision brightened.
But it didn’t brighten all at once like a light turning on—darkness condensed toward Su-ho, then split into four directions from his head to his toes, fell away, and scattered outward again from his feet.
And then the world became bright.
“Wow?”
A fascinating effect.
And—
[ You have successfully entered the Shadow Realm. ]
[ You are the first player to enter the Shadow Realm. ]
[ You have achieved an incredible feat that no other player has been able to accomplish. ]
[ The system acknowledges your supreme achievement and gifts you 20 bonus stats. ]
Having finally entered the real Shadow Realm, Su-ho saw some unexpectedly welcome notices.
'A nice start.'
Twenty bonus stats the moment he came in.
Su-ho invested every single one of the bonus stats he’d gained into Sense.
That brought his Sense stat to 95, and now he only needed five more to reach Silver rank.
'If I’m lucky, I can hit Silver color here.'
Thinking that, he began looking around.
His surroundings were an ordinary forest.
The sun was bright, the sky was blue, the air was fresh, and even the greenery was deep green.
'This is totally different from what I expected.'
Since it was the Shadow Realm where the Shadow Lord was, he’d imagined something dark like the underworld, or a world in black and white.
But when he actually came here, it wasn’t dark or gloomy at all—it was similar to the normal world he knew, which surprised him.
As Su-ho looked around, he spoke.
“Guiyeong.”
“Kkung!”
Thankfully, Guiyeong was summoned at Su-ho’s call.
Honestly, he’d thought that since Guiyeong had become the door to the Shadow Realm, it might not be summonable inside the Shadow Realm—but thankfully, it was.
Su-ho asked Guiyeong.
“Guiyeong, where do I need to go to meet the Shadow Lord?”
“Kiing?”
Guiyeong tilted its head at Su-ho’s question.
What, you don’t know?
Tch. If that’s the case, I’m screwed....
'Since I came to the Shadow Realm through Guiyeong, I thought I’d be able to smoothly meet the Shadow Lord through Guiyeong too, but I guess that doesn’t work.'
That was disappointing.
Still, since it had once belonged to the Shadow Lord, he’d thought Guiyeong would track the Shadow Lord’s traces the way a dog follows its owner’s scent—but it looked like Guiyeong was only wolf-shaped.
'It can’t be helped. I’ll have to find them myself.'
Well.
He hadn’t expected things to go that easily anyway.
Su-ho immediately summoned Cheolma and mounted up.
“Heeheeheehing!”
The basics of scouting were securing visibility.
Of course, the standard rule of scouting was to avoid being noticed as much as possible, but Su-ho would rather catch someone’s eye and have them acknowledge him first.
If he had to fight, he could just fight.
After rising high into the sky and scanning the area, Su-ho surprisingly quickly found living beings.
'People?'
Not just one or two.
They were even cultivating fields, and Su-ho headed straight for them.
He didn’t dismount and approach slowly on purpose.
He just rode Cheolma straight near them and landed.
“Huh?”
“W-what is that?”
“A monster?!”
Sure enough, the people who saw Su-ho were startled.
An expected reaction.
Su-ho got down from Cheolma, showed his open palms, and said,
“Just a moment. Everyone, calm down. I’m not a suspicious person—”
That was when.
“Uh?! L-look at that! That guy has a shadow!”
“What?”
“Huh?”
At one man’s words, everyone’s gaze went to Su-ho’s shadow.
Su-ho also looked at his own shadow.
“Why is my shadow....”
And a moment later, Su-ho’s eyes widened.
Because the farmers Su-ho had approached... no—looking closely, aside from Su-ho and Cheolma, nothing else had a shadow at all.
